August 28, 2005

Welcome to Issue #203 of the Internet Legal Research Weekly, a newsletter that delivers relevant and timely legal research information, and other fun stuff, to your inbox every Sunday. If you like what you read, please forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to do the same! To subscribe, all you have to do is visit Inter Alia and fill out the subscription form -- it's free!

Building a Local Community
Yahoo's Local Search has really been evolving, and as it does it becomes more of a community experience. Now when you look for restaurants, services, or other items in a particular city or zip code, you'll also see what others thought -- Local is now offering reviews from users. The page provides tons of information, and it's a little overwhelming; in addition to the map of the area, you'll also receive lists of What's Happening Locally, Users' Favorite Restaurants, and other Local Favorites. As more people use this, the service will become more useful.

Foil Phishers with HTML
Here's a nice trick to use when trying to decide whether that e-mail you received is a phishing scam. If the e-mail comes to you in HTML format, just hover your mouse over any links that you see in the e-mail. Most e-mail clients have a "tooltip" box that will pop up, letting you know the actual address for the link. Even if the link text shows a legit web site, the target may be a completely different address, alerting you that the e-mail probably is a phishing scam.

A Google Maps Cornucopia
Yes, I know I rave on and on about the wonderful things Google Maps can do for you. But don't take my word for it -- check out this page of Essential Resources for Google Maps and see for yourself.

Blogging Webcast Now Available
In case you missed the seminar Dennis Kennedy and I did a few weeks ago with the folks at FindLaw on Blogs for Lawyers, you can now view the webcast. Check it out.

Blawgs of the Week
Here we go, with another crop of law-related weblogs to explore this week. First up, Todd Mayover is in-house counsel for a medical device manufacturing company in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He's discussing issues that concern the practice of in-house intellectual property attorneys over at IP Counsel Blog. Bruce Allen is a Marketing Catalyst, and he's sharing what he knows about marketing and sales of legal and accounting services at his blog. PB is a law student at Capital University Law School in Columbus Ohio, and he's getting ready to begin a new school year with Pelican Barbecue and Buckeye Beer, featuring "law school with a tangy marinade and a drinking problem." Andrew Ewalt's Law Blog is an experiment, of sorts -- he agreed back in May to start writing a blog for Law Practice Magazine, which is following a year in the life of a selected blogger. Andrew talks about Connecticut law, primarily "helping individuals, families, and businesses control their affairs, protect their families and preserve their assets, through effective, prompt and reasonable legal services." Give it a look, and follow his progress over at Law Practice Magazine. The lawyers at Davis Wright Tremaine are blogging about the Patriot Act, identity theft, phishing, and more at the Privacy and Security Law Blog. A group of five IP lawyers at Farella Braun + Martel are blogging at IP Blawg. I love blogs like this -- groups of lawyers from the same firm, pooling their collective knowledge on the subject. T.J. Thurston has put together the Lit Support Blog to discuss all matters involving litigation support, including scanning, coding, electronic discovery, court reporting, litigation technologies and software, trial exhibits and more.

Caught in the 'Net

Yet Another Big Week for Google

Hardly a week goes by without some new feature being introduced by Google. Well, that didn't happen this week -- instead there were TWO new features introduced.

Want to bring Google along with you wherever you go on the Internet. Now you can, with the latest version of the Google Desktop. The new Sidebar feature provides instant access to all the things that are important to you, including News headlines, weather, your GMail, a Scratch Pad for keeping notes, Photos, and much more.

Then, the very next day Google unveiled its new Google Talk service, and everyone's abuzz. The setup is pretty easy, but you'll need a GMail account to register. The service appears to be pretty basic, and lacks a lot of the features of the more established chat clients like Yahoo! You can also make free phone calls to other GMail users -- I have heard reports that there have been connection problems, but the quality of the calls is Skype-like. I'm not sure what all the fuss is, at least for now. But I've noticed that this is Google's typical method: to debut a very basic product, and then improve its functionality over time. They sure did it with Google Maps -- so let's see what happens.

Patent/Trademark RSS Feeds

The rethink(ip) guys have been quiet for awhile, and that can only mean one thing: that they are up to something big. This time, they have grown tired of waiting for the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office to create RSS feeds for news items and notices, so they created their own. There are feeds for:

-- Official Gazette and Federal Register Announcements
-- General News
-- Patent News
-- Trademark News
-- All four feeds combined

As usual, they're at the forefront of providing relevant, timely information to the legal researcher.

Help Desk

Another Word 2003 tip this week (there are so many!) Sometimes you need to compare two documents side by side, and you don't have a redlining program to help you. Don't worry -- Word 2003 can help. Make sure your two documents are open, then select Compare Side by Side from the Window Menu. A toolbar opens that lets you control the documents, and even scroll them at the same time.

Do you have a question about searching the Internet or your computer in general? Drop me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net – I’ll post your question (don’t worry, I won’t use your real name) and try to get an answer for you!